Why Are We Shrugging Off Women Dying From Abortion bans - Shouldn't we be in the Streets?

It only took one young woman to die from a miscarriage in Ireland before they changed their abortion laws. Here, death rates of pregnant women are soaring - why doesn't anyone care.

Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash

Savita Halappanavar had the most beautiful, lively smile that lit up her lovely face and big brown eyes.

At thirty- one, she was excited to be pregnant with her first baby. She was a dentist and was loving Ireland, which she had moved to from India with her engineer husband, Praveen.

Everything had been going perfectly well with her pregnancy and she felt “ on top of the world,” her husband told the BBC news service.

That is, until at 17 weeks she began experiencing severe back pain and was admitted to University Hospital Galway, on a Sunday, where Savita learned the devastating news that she was miscarrying.

But far worse than that, was that she was denied a D&C procedure to empty her uterus because her fetus’s heart was still beating, even though there was there was no chance that her baby could survive at such an early stage in her pregnancy.

That’s because in Ireland in 2012 fetuses had 8th Amendment protection in the country’s Constitution which gave the “unborn”a right to life that was equal to a pregnant woman’s right to keep on living.

This meant that Savita couldn’t get the urgent medical treatment she needed even though her miscarriage put her at risk of developing a dangerous sepsis infection.

Their 8th Amendment read like this: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Well guess what, and I’m betting you won’t be surprised. The Republican party’s platform, which was supported by Donald Trump before the 2024 election, says virtually the same thing.

Here are the key words: “The Constitution’s guarantee that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property” deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all” are “endowed by their Creator” with the inalienable right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

That’s right. Republican anti abortion extremists want more Savitas. Every time a woman gets pregnant, they want that fertilized egg from the moment of conception to have just as much of a right to life as their living mother does.

FERTILIZED EGGS ARE GIVEN JUST AS MUCH PRIORITY AS LIVING MOMS

That means that when a woman gets pregnant and develops a life threatening condition like cancer, or soaringly high blood pressure or learns she is carrying an unviable baby whose condition is also threatening her own life, well that’s too bad. Anti abortion activists and zealous ‘pro life’ politicians have decreed that her life has to take a back seat.

The cancer and high blood pressure can be monitored but no abortion can be provided if saving a mother’s life means having to end the pregnancy.

I’ve already seen many cases like this in Texas and in other Red states with abortion bans. Even women with hopeless ectopic pregnancies in Texas - where the fertilized egg is implanted in a woman’s fallopian tube with no ability to grow into a living child - women’s lives are being put on the line.

I covered the stories of two healthy young Texas women - Kyleigh Thurman and Kelsie Norris -De La Cruz - with excruciatingly painful ectopic pregnancies who were turned away from multiple hospitals because the ‘lives’ of the fertilized eggs mattered more than the lives of their mothers.

One of these women almost bled to death when her fallopian tube burst from the pressure of the implanted egg. The other woman was rushed into surgery just in time before bursting. But both women lost one of their two fallopian tubes, damaging their future fertility, because anti abortion Republicans have terrorized Texas doctors who as a result do not prioritize the lives of their pregnant patients.

Republican lawmakers could care less about Savita’s or Kyleigh and Kelsie’s lives. But they constantly care about the ‘unborn’ babies that don’t yet need Medicaid healthcare for themselves, a public education, SNAP food benefits or a place to live. Once they are out of the womb, well that’s a whole other story.

A few months ago I wrote a column about how Trump and the Republican party deliberately set out to deceive Americans like you because they knew that banning abortion was mega unpopular before the 2024 election.

That’s why they deliberately never used the word ‘abortion’ in their platform and Trump ran away from a commitment to a national abortion ban. Instead he claimed that he was the “father of IVF” even though he barely knew what IVF was.

Now, a few months later, what a surprise - it’s turns out that Trump has paid about the same amount of attention to protecting IVF, as he does to four of his own children, Tiffany, Baron, Eric and Don Jr.

DONALD TRUMP’S BROKEN PROMISES ON IVF

In other words - he’s done nothing to ensure that all American women have access to IVF everywhere in the country, let alone making an effort to provide free IVF - another of his unkept campaign promises.

I’m sure he has zero idea that several Red state constitutions protect the “unborn”, like Alabama’s where the state supreme court ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF, were ‘preborn’ children, and therefore he is at odds with his own Republican party’s platform.

Meanwhile Georgia is prioritizing a fetus over the dignity of its mother. The state, which has a 6 week abortion ban is keeping a 31 year-old woman alive for months against the wishes of her family after she was declared brain dead at 9 weeks pregnant.

Republican- dominated Georgia’s just got to protect that ‘unborn’ baby in the vessel that was once going to be its mother.

Creepy! And extremely dangerous to any future Savitas there.

Please keep this in mind as you hear loads more nonsense about the rights of the ‘unborn’ or ‘preborn’ in the next four years while Trump lets his anti abortion activist supporters fulfill plans to give fetuses equal rights to living women and girls, and in many cases doctors and hospitals choose to preserve the lives of the ‘preborn’ over living women.

I’ve forewarned you that someone that you know and care about could become a victim of their obsession with fetuses.

As Savita grew sicker, both she and her her husband pleaded with hospital doctors to please, please end her pregnancy. As a dentist, she was well aware of the dangers of a sepsis infection. She certainly knew the immense risk to her life that was being forced on her and she knew that her fetus was never going to grow into a living baby.

But it was only, three days later on Wednesday, after her fetus’s heart finally stopped beating that Savita was finally eligible for a D&C which is the same as an abortion procedure.

Tragically, it was too late. After Savita was finally given the procedure that she desperately needed her heart rate soared according to her husband. She was moved into the intensive care unit. By Friday, she was “critically ill”from an infection and on Sunday - a week after first being hospitalized - her organs started failing and she died.

In one week, she had gone from an excited, healthy mom-to-be, to dead all because of the Irish Constitution.

If you still believe that, that could never happen here to American women, you are wrong.

Three healthy pregnant young women in Texas have already died because hospitals regarded them as ‘untouchables’ and refused them timely and what -used-to -be-standard care .

PREGNANT WOMEN ARE NOW NEEDLESSLY DYING HERE IN AMERICA

These women’s cases have been thoroughly documented by professional state committees. The women all died as the result of miscarriages and a refusal by doctors and hospitals to provide lifesaving D&C’s to remove the bacteria-filled contents of their uteruses.

They experienced exactly what happened to Savita. And in all their cases, their husbands, mothers and even personal OBGYNs begged the hospitals to save their loved one’s lives, just as Savita’s husband had done.

It’s amazing what the threat of 99 year or even 10 year prison sentences and the loss of your medical license can do to paralyze doctors and make them abandon their medical vows of “do no harm”.

Now there is one huge difference between Savita’s story and those of Jessica, Nevaeh and Porsha who perished in Texas hospitals.

After Savita’s death, the Irish people rebelled against their draconian abortion law. They marched in the streets and demanded that the Irish parliament change the country’s abortion law. Candlelight vigils in Savita’s memory were held all over Ireland, 10,000 people marched down the streets of Dublin demanding legislative change so that “Never Again” would a pregnant woman die needlessly like Savita.

The hospital began an investigation into her death as did the Irish Health Service Executive.

It took time and more pressure from angry Irish citizens but 6 years later a new Constitutional Amendment - the 36th amendment - passed in a landslide vote and Irish voters also empowered the legislature to make changes to their abortion ban through the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act.

The new Act made abortion legal up to 12 weeks and later in the pregnancy if there was a serious risk to the mother’s health or life or if the fetus suffered from a fatal fetal anomaly.

It’s certainly not perfect and a law that pro - choicers would be thrilled with but it’s a helluva lot better than the total Irish ban that had been in place. The result has been that no pregnant women have died in the country under similar circumstances since Savita passed away.

The big question for me here and now is why despite the 3 documented deaths in Texas from their extreme abortion ban and the fact that the maternal mortality rate in the state has soared by 56% since the state’s first ban was passed in 2021 and despite two documented deaths of young women in Georgia from ‘incomplete abortions’, have Americans just shrugged their shoulders?

Why aren’t Americans and especially American women NOT marching in the streets and demanding that abortion bans be thrown out or at least made far less restrictive and punitive?

Why the hell don’t WE care that our American sisters are dying because Republicans believe or have taken the politically advantageous position that fertilized eggs and embryos have just as much value or even more worth, that living, breathing women and girls?

Instead of women and even men marching and loudly protesting that women are being condemned to death by fearful hospitals, hospital attorneys, administrators and physicians, America is virtually silent.

The mainstream media barely writes about abortion and women’s reproductive healthcare issues especially now that the issue of abortion rights didn’t prove a winner by carrying Kamala Harris into the White House in the 2024 election.

Astoundingly a majority of white women still voted for Donald Trump even after he appointed the 3 conservative Supreme Court justices, who ignored 50 years of precedent and stripped away their right to an abortion.

Why is that?

Americans have been silent even as Georgia dismissed all 32 members of its maternal mortality committee which had until then investigated the deaths of all the pregnant women in the state.

The maternal mortality committee had inconveniently investigated and reported that both Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, both young moms, had died preventable deaths due to the state’s abortion bans following their incomplete abortions.

Amber was denied an urgent D&C in the hospital after an incomplete medication abortion and she died of a sepsis infection when the bacteria filled contents of her uterus were not removed for hours as she suffered from pain and a high fever.

Candi was too terrified to go to a hospital when she also became sick from a incomplete medication abortion because she feared being prosecuted under the state’s recent abortion bans.

Both women obtained the abortion pills they used to end their abortions, from providers outside of Georgia.

Incomplete abortions occur in very rare instances when the two pill abortion regime doesn’t expel all the contents of the uterus and the remnants become infected. Before abortion bans were passed, incomplete abortions could be treated easily and quickly with a D&C provided by an OBGYN or a hospital ER department.

But now in abortion ban states, if a doctor performs a D&C to empty a woman’s uterus in order to prevent her from getting an infection, they can be charged with performing an illegal abortion, so unsurprisingly physicians hesitate to provide this highly effective treatment.

The Georgia maternal mortality committee’s members were dismissed after state government officials accused someone on the committee of releasing “confidential” information about the two women’s deaths to the Pro Publica news organization which broke stories about their tragic outcomes.

But think about it - why are the results of maternal mortality investigations not supposed to be released to the public? Why aren’t we supposed to know that abortion bans are killing women? If abortion bans are such a great thing and enacted to save lives, shouldn’t we the public be fully informed by our state governments when the bans backfire and take the lives of pregnant women?

Shouldn’t we be having a very robust discussion about the ‘collateral damage’ of these bans - the loss of lives of American women?

In contrast to the responses of state governments here in America, the Irish hospital and government both did investigations themselves into Savita’s death and released their findings publicly. They didn’t try to cover up the circumstances of her unnecessary death.

ABORTION BAN STATES TRY TO COVERUP PREGNANT WOMEN’S DEATHS

However top level Georgia government officials don’t believe that the best way to disinfect a gaping wound is with disinfectant and sunshine.

The state of Texas has also gone into cover up mode after three young women died miscarrying very much wanted babies there?

Since ProPublica and other news outlets like this Substack reported on their pointless deaths, the Texas state government announced that their own Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee wouldn’t examine the suspicious deaths of pregnant women in 2022 and 2023, the two first years after the state’s first abortion ban - SB8- became the law in 2021.

Texas, it seems has also decided that it’s better to hide deaths than try to solve the issue of why so many Texas moms-to- be are dying. They refuse to face the fact that politicians can’t legislate good medical decisions and instead have doubled down on their bans by appointing a hugely well -known anti - abortion activist, Dr Ingrid Skop to the Maternal Mortality committee.

It really goes to show how two different countries feel about innocent pregnant women dying due to abortion bans.

The Irish population as a whole didn’t “other” Savita. They didn’t see her as a woman of color who belonged to some marginalized group that wasn’t like the rest of them. and therefore ‘deserved’ her fate.

Instead the Irish were just outraged that an innocent woman who wanted to be a mom died for no other reason than that their country’s abortion law dictated that her life wasn’t as important as that of a 17 week old unviable fetus.

They demanded a change in their abortion law so that no other Irish woman would meet Savita’s same fate.

Here in the US, very few of us it seems, care that at least five women and probably far more - now lie in graves because Republican politicians are beholden to powerful anti abortion groups that ply them with campaign donations.

Donald Trump received $52 million for his 2020 campaign from the most powerful anti abortion group in the country, the Susan B Anthony List.

The big bucks explain a lot about the Republican silence about the trail of dead and physically damaged women due to extreme state abortion rights.

Women like Texan Amanda Zurawski who will never be able to carry a pregnancy again after her water broke at 18 weeks and she was refused an abortion because, like Savita, her fetus still had a heartbeat.

Only when sepsis ravaged her body and doctors had to fight for three days to save her life, did she receive an abortion.

However, by then, the infection and collapsed her uterus and scarred her fallopian tubes beyond repair.

So much for Republicans being ‘pro life’ when they prevent a woman from bearing children.

As for the shrugs from most of the rest of the American population - do we not care about our fellow female citizens dying and losing their fertility because we’ve already become hardened to deaths that we think are necessary to preserve ‘rights’? In this case, the rights of the ’unborn’.

After all we’ve now accepted that children and other innocent Americans will die in mass shootings as the price of preserving our 2nd Amendment right to own guns, including assault weapons.

Mass shootings, especially in schools, simply don’t happen in other developed countries. If we can become hardened to these unforgivable and bloody deaths then yes, maybe that explains the reason that the deaths of pregnant women from cruel abortion bans simply don’t move us to protest for change here, unlike in Ireland.

Please take a moment to reflect on the fact that like mass shootings with easy-to-obtain assault weapons, abortion bans are not happening in other modern countries.

And while we are the only developed country in the world willing to sacrifice our women and girls to protect a fertilized egg, we are also the only one to refuse to provide paid maternity leave and now to have a Republican party determined to cut government funding in the form of Medicaid from covering the cost of 40 % of the births in this country.

Fertilized eggs get protection while pregnant women will be giving birth in hospital parking lots.

One more point I have to make. America is the only country in the world other than Afghanistan which has turned back the clocks to the 1800s on women’s personal choices.

Let that sink in.

Are we ever going to seriously start to fight back?

Readers - I’d love to hear from you about why the US is doing this to pregnant women? Why are we OK with the clock being turned back on over half the country’s population? Why don’t the senseless deaths of pregnant women outrage us? Why don’t we think abortion bans will affect us? Please let me know your thoughts on this. I’d love to get deeper insight into this disturbing phenomenon.